Parametrized Thue Equations A Survey

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Parametrized Thue Equations A Survey Clemens Heuberger Institut fr Mathematik B Technische Universitt Graz 8010 Graz Austria clemens.heuberger@tugraz.at January 29, 2005 Abstract We consider families of parametrized Thue equations F a(x, Y ) = ±1, a, where F a [a][x,y ] is a binary irreducible form with coefficients which are polynomials in some parameter a. We give a survey on known results. 1 Thue Equations Let F Z[X, Y ] be a homogeneous, irreducible polynomial of degree n 3 and m be a nonzero integer. Then the Diophantine equation F (X, Y ) = m (1) is called a Thue equation in honour of A. Thue, who proved in 1909 [57]: Theorem 1 (Thue). (1) has only a finite number of solutions (x, y) Z 2. Thue s proof is based on his approximation theorem: Let α be an algebraic number of degree n 2 and ɛ > 0. Then there exists a constant c 1 (α, ɛ), such that for all p Z and q N α p q c 1(α, ɛ) q. n/2+1+ɛ Since this approximation theorem is not effective, Thue s theorem is neither effective. 2 Number of Solutions We call a solution (x, y) to F (x, y) = m primitive, if x and y are coprime integers. The problem of giving upper bounds (depending on m and the degree n) for the number of primitive solutions goes back to Siegel. Such a bound has first been given by Evertse [14]. An improved version has been given by Bombieri and Schmidt [6]: The author is supported by the grant S8307-MAT of the Austrian Science Fund. 1

Theorem 2 (Bombieri-Schmidt [6]). There is an absolute constant c 2 such that for all n c 2 the Diophantine equation F (X, Y ) = m has at most 215 n 1+ω(m) primitive solutions, where ω(m) denotes the number of prime factors of m and solutions (x, y) and ( x, y) are regarded as the same. At least for m = ±1, this result is best possible (up to the constant 215), since the equation X n + (X Y )(2X Y )... (nx Y ) = ±1 has at least the n + 1 solutions ±{(1, 1),..., (1, n), (0, 1)}. Sharper bounds have been obtained for special classes of Thue equations. If only k coefficients of F (X, Y ) are nonzero, the number of solutions depends on k and m only (and not on n). For k = 3, this is proved by Mueller and Schmidt [41]: There are at most O(m 2/n ) solutions. The general case k 3 is proved in Mueller and Schmidt [42]: There are at most O(k 2 m 2/n (1+log m 1/n )) solutions. Thomas [56] gives absolute upper bounds for the number of solutions for m = 1 and k = 3: If n 38, then there are at most 20 solutions (x, y) with xy 2, where solutions (x, y) and ( x, y) are only counted once. For smaller n, similar bounds are given. If only 2 coefficients of F (X, Y ) are nonzero, we arrive at the special case ax n by n = ±1 and we consider only the case ab 0, x > 0, y > 0. This equation has been studied by many authors, starting with Delone [11] and Nagell [43], who proved that there is at most one solution for n = 3. Several authors have contributed to this question. Finally, Bennett [4] could prove that there is at most one solution (x, y). We now consider cubic Thue equations F (X, Y ) = 1. If the discriminant of F is negative, there are at most 5 solutions, and the cases of 4 and 5 solutions can be listed explicitly. This has been shown independently by Delaunay [10] and Nagell [44] in the 1920 s. If the discriminant is positive, there are at most 10 solutions, as it has been proved by Bennett [3]. Okazaki [47] proves that if the discriminant is at least 5.65 10 65, then there are at most 7 solutions. It is conjectured by Nagell [45], Pethő [48], and Lippok [35] that there are at most 5 solutions except for five equations (modulo equivalence) which have 6 or 9 solutions. We note that there are two families of cubic Thue equations which have exactly five solutions, cf. items 2 and 3 in the list in Section 4.1. Okazaki [46] considers the analogous problem for quartic Thue equations F (X, Y ) = ±1. If all roots of F (x, 1) are real and the discriminant is larger than a computable constant c 3, this equation has at most 14 solutions, where solutions (x, y) and ( x, y) are counted once. 3 Algorithmic Solution of Single Thue Equations Studying linear forms in logarithms of algebraic numbers, A. Baker could give an effective upper bound for the solutions of such a Thue equation in 1968 [1]: Theorem 3 (Baker). Let κ > n + 1 and (x, y) Z 2 be a solution of (1). Then max{ x, y } < c 4 e logκ m, where c 4 = c 4 (n, κ, F ) is an effectively computable number. Since that time, these bounds have been improved; Bugeaud and Győry [7] give the following bound: Theorem 4 (Bugeaud-Győry). Let B max{ m, e}, α be a root of F (X, 1), K := Q(α), R := R K the regulator of K and r the unit rank of K. Let H 3 be an upper bound for the absolute values of the coefficients of F. Then all solutions (x, y) Z 2 of (1) satisfy ( ) max{ x, y } < exp c 5 R max{log R, 1} (R + log(hb)) 2

and ( ) max{ x, y } < exp c 6 H 2n 2 log 2n 1 H log B, with c 5 = 3 r+27 (r + 1) 7r+19 n 2n+6r+14 and c 6 = 3 3(n+9) n 18(n+1). The bounds for the solutions obtained by Baker s method are rather large, thus the solutions practically cannot be found by simple enumeration. For a similar problem Baker and Davenport [2] proposed a method to reduce drastically the bound by using continued fraction reduction. Pethő and Schulenberg [50] replaced the continued fraction reduction by the LLL-algorithm and gave a general method to solve (1) for the totally real case with m = 1 and arbitrary n. Tzanakis and de Weger [61] describe the general case. Finally, Bilu and Hanrot [5] were able to replace the LLL-algorithm by the much faster continued fraction method and solve Thue equations up to degree 1000. 4 Families of Thue Equations We study families of Thue equations F a (X, Y ) = ±1, a N (2) where F a Z[a][X, Y ] is an irreducible binary form of degree of at least 3 with coefficients which are integer polynomials in a. In the investigation of such families usually only two types of solutions appear: Firstly, there are polynomial solutions X(a), Y (a) Z[a] which satisfy (2) in Z[a], and secondly, there occur (sometimes) single solutions for a few small values of the parameter a. However, Lettl [30] points out that the family X 6 (a 1)Y 6 = a 2 does not have any polynomial solution, but there are sporadic solutions for infinitely many values of the parameter a. The first infinite parametrized families of Thue equations were considered by Thue [58] himself: He proved that the equation (a + 1)X n ay n = 1, X > 0, Y > 0 (3) has only the solution x = y = 1 for a suitably large in relation to prime n 3. For n = 3, the equation (3) has only this solution for a 386. Of course, Bennett s result [4] cited in Section 2 implies that this is true for all n 3 and a 1. For a description of the techniques used to solve families of Thue equations, we refer to Heuberger [20]. Some automated procedures are presented in [26]. 4.1 Families of Fixed Degree In 1990, Thomas [53] investigated for the first time a parametrized family of cubic Thue equations of positive discriminant. Since 1990, the following particular families of Thue equations have been studied: 1. X 3 (a 1)X 2 Y (a + 2)XY 2 Y 3 = 1. Thomas [53] and Mignotte [36] proved that for a 4, the only solutions are (0, 1), (1, 0) and ( 1, +1), while for the cases 0 a 4 there exist some nontrivial solutions, too, which are given explicitly in [53]. For the same form F a (X, Y ), all solutions of the Thue inequality F a (X, Y ) 2a + 1 have been found by Mignotte, Pethő, and Lemmermeyer [39]. 2. X 3 ax 2 Y (a + 1)XY 2 Y 3 = X(X + Y )(X (a + 1)Y ) Y 3 = 1. Lee [29] and independently Mignotte and Tzanakis [40] proved that for a 3.33 10 23 there are only the solutions (1, 0), (0, 1), (1, 1), ( a 1, 1), (1, a). Mignotte [37] could prove the same result for all a 3. 3

3. Wakabayashi [66] proved that for a 1.35 10 14, the equation X 3 a 2 XY 2 + Y 3 = 1 has exactly the five solutions (0, 1), (1, 0), (1, a 2 ), (±a, 1). 4. Togbe [60] considered the equation X 3 (n 3 2n 2 + 3n 3)X 2 Y n 2 XY 2 Y 3 = ±1. If n 1, the only solutions are (±1, 0) and (0, ±1). 5. Wakabayashi [64]: X 3 + axy 2 + by 3 a + b + 1 for arbitrary b and a 360b 4 as well as for b {1, 2} and a 1. He uses Padé approximations. 6. Thomas [55]: Let b, c be nonzero integers such that the discriminant of t 3 bt 2 + ct 1 is negative, = 4c b 2 > 0, and c min{4.2 10 41 b 2.32, 3.6 10 41 1.1582 }. Then the Thue equation X 3 bx 2 Y + cxy 2 Y 3 = 1 only has the trivial solutions (1, 0), (0, 1). 7. X(X a d2 Y )(X a d3 Y ) ± Y 3 = 1. This family was investigated by Thomas [54]. He proved that for 0 < d 2 < d 3 and a ( 2 10 6 (d 2 + 2d 3 ) ) 4.85/(d 3 d 2) nontrivial solutions cannot exist. He also investigated this family with a d1 and a d2 replaced by monic polynomials in a of degrees d 1 and d 2, respectively (see Theorem 5). 8. X 4 ax 3 Y X 2 Y 2 + axy 3 + Y 4 = X(X Y )(X + Y )(X ay ) + Y 4 = ±1. This quartic family was solved by Pethő [49] for large values of a; Mignotte, Pethő, and Roth [38] solved it completely: The only solutions are ±{(0, 1), (1, 0), (1, 1), (1, 1), (a, 1), (1, a)} for a / {2, 4}. If a = 4, four more solutions exist. If a = 2, the family is reducible. 9. X 4 ax 3 Y 3X 2 Y 2 + axy 3 + Y 4 = ±1 has been solved for a 9.9 10 27 by Pethő [49]. 10. bx 4 ax 3 Y 6bX 2 Y 2 + axy 3 + by 4 N. For b = 1 and N = 1, this equation has been solved completely by Lettl and Pethő [31]; Chen and Voutier [9] solved it independently by using the hypergeometric method. For the same form binary form F a,b (X, Y ), Lettl, Pethő and Voutier [33] proved that F a (X, Y ) 6a + 7 has only trivial primitive solutions for a 58, if b = 1. Furthermore, x 2 + y 2 max{25a 2 /(64b 2 ), 4N 2 /a} if a > 308b 4, cf. Yuan [67]. 11. Togbé [59] gives all solutions to X 4 a 2 X 3 Y (a 3 + 2a 2 + 4a + 2)X 2 Y 2 a 2 XY 3 + Y 4 = 1 for a 1.191 10 19 and a, a + 2, a 2 + 4 squarefree. 12. X 4 a 2 X 2 Y 2 + Y 4 = X 2 (X a)(x + a) + Y 4 a 2 2 This family of Thue inequalities has only trivial solutions with y 1 for a 8 (Wakabayashi [62]). 13. X 4 + 4aX 3 Y + 6aX 2 Y 2 + 4a 2 XY 3 + a 2 Y 4 a 2 has been solved for a 205 by Chen and Voutier [8]. 14. Dujella and Jadrijević [12], [13] prove that X 4 4cX 3 Y + (6c + 2)X 2 Y 2 + 4cXY 3 + Y 4 6c + 4 has only trivial solutions for all c 3. 15. X(X Y )(X ay )(X by ) Y 4 = ±1. All solutions of this two-parametric family are known for 10 2 1028 < a + 1 < b a(1 + (log a) 4 ), cf. Pethő and Tichy [51]. The case of b = a + 1 has been considered by Heuberger, Pethő and Tichy [23], where all solutions could be determined for all a Z. 16. Jadrijević [27] proves that for every 0.5 < s 1, there is an effectively computable constant P (s) such that if a 0 and max{ a, b } P (s) and gcd(a, b) max{ a s, b s }, then the equation X 4 2abX 3 Y + 2(a 2 b 2 + 1)X 2 Y 2 + 2abXY 3 + Y 4 = 1 only has trivial solutions. In particular, P (0.999) = 10 27 and P (0.501) = 10 36836. 4

17. Wakabayashi [63] found all solutions of X 4 a 2 X 2 Y 2 by 4 a 2 + b 1 for a 5.3 10 10 b 6.22. 18. X(X 2 Y 2 )(X 2 a 2 Y 2 ) Y 5 = ±1. For a > 3.6 10 19, all solutions have been found by Heuberger [18]. 19. Gaál and Lettl [15] investigated the family X 5 + (a 1)X 4 Y (2a 3 + 4a + 4)X 3 Y 2 + (a 4 + a 3 + 2a 2 + 4a 3)X 2 Y 3 + (a 3 + a 2 + 5a + 3)XY 4 + Y 5 = ±1 and found all solutions for a 3.3 10 15. The remaining cases have been solved in Gaál and Lettl [16]. 20. Levesque and Mignotte [34] found all solutions of the equation X 5 + 2X 4 Y + (a + 3)X 3 Y 2 + (2a + 3)X 2 Y 3 + (a + 1)XY 4 Y 5 = ±1 for sufficiently large a. 21. X 6 2aX 5 Y (5a+15)X 4 Y 2 20X 3 Y 3 +5aX 2 Y 4 +(2a+6)XY 5 +Y 6 {±1, ±27} was investigated by Lettl, Pethő, and Voutier. They found all solutions for a 89 by hypergeometric methods [33] and all solutions for a < 89 by using Baker s method [32]. In [33], they also proved that F a (X, Y ) 120a + 323 (for the form F a (X, Y ) considered) has only trivial primitive solutions for a 89. 22. X 8 8nX 7 Y 28X 6 Y 2 + 56nX 5 Y 3 + 70X 4 Y 4 56nX 3 Y 5 28nX 2 Y 6 + 8nXY 7 + Y 8 = ±1 has only trivial solutions for n {a Z : a + b 2 = (1 + 2) 2k+1, k N} with n 6.71 10 32. (Heuberger, Togbé and Ziegler [26]). A more detailed survey on cubic families is contained in Wakabayashi [65]. 4.2 Families of Relative Thue Equations A few families of relative Thue equations have also been solved, i.e., families where the parameters and the solutions are elements of the same imaginary quadratic number field. So let D > 0 be an integer, k := Q( D), o k its ring of algebraic integers, and µ a root of unity in o k. 1. For t o k with t 3.03 10 9, the only solutions (x, y) o 2 k to X3 (t 1)X 2 Y (t+2)xy 2 Y 3 = µ satisfy max{ x, y } 1 and can be listed explicitly (Heuberger, Pethő, and Tichy[24]). 2. For t o k with t > 2.88 10 33, the only solutions (x, y) o 2 k to X3 tx 2 Y (t + 1)XY 2 Y 3 = µ satisfy min{ x, y } 1 and can be listed explicitly (Ziegler [68]). 3. For s, t o k with t 5.3 10 1 0 s 12.44 or s = 1 and t > 550, all solutions (x, y) o 2 k to X 4 t 2 X 2 Y 2 + s 2 Y 4 t 2 s 2 2 are explicitly known (Ziegler [69]). 4.3 Families of Arbitrary Degree Moreover, some general families of arbitrary degree have been considered. Apart from (3), the investigated general families are of the shape F a (X, Y ) := n (X p i (a)y ) Y n = ±1, (4) i=1 where p 1,..., p n Z[a] are polynomials, which have been called split families by E. Thomas [54]. For i = 1,..., n it can easily be seen that (X, Y ) {±(p i, 1), (±1, 0)} are solutions. Thomas conjectured that if p 1 = 0, deg p 2 < < deg p n and the polynomials are monic, there are no further solutions for sufficiently large values of the parameter a. In [54] he proved this conjecture for n = 3 under some technical hypothesis: 5

Theorem 5. Let u = ±1, a(t), b(t) Z[t] be monic polynomials and a := deg a(t), b := deg b(t) with 0 < a < b. We write A(t) := a(t)/t a 1 and B(t) := b(t)/t b 1 and define for n 1 W (n) := ( 1) j+1 (b A(n) j a B(n) j ), j j=1 which can be written in powers of 1/n as W (n) = n j=1 w jn j. Further we define J := min{j N : w j 0}. If J b a or J = b a 3w J + 2b + a 0 3w J 2(b a) 0, then there is an effectively computable constant c 7 depending on the coefficients of a(t) and b(t) such that for n c 7 the family of Thue equations X(X a(n)y )(X b(n)y ) + uy 3 = ±1 only has the solutions ±{(1, 0), (0, u), (a(n)u, u), (b(n)u, u)}. Halter-Koch, Lettl, Pethő and Tichy [17] considered (4) for p 1 = 0, p 2 = d 2,..., p n 1 = d n 1 and p n = a, where d 2,..., d n 1 are fixed distinct integers. They found all solutions for sufficiently large values of a assuming a conjecture of Lang and Waldschmidt [28] which is a very sharp bound for linear forms in logarithms of algebraic numbers : Theorem 6. Let n 3, p 1 = 0, p 2 = d 2,..., p n 1 = d n 1 be distinct integers and p n = a. Let α = α(a) be a zero of P (x) = n i=1 (x p i) d with d = ±1 and suppose that the index I of α d 1,..., α d n 1 in O, the group of units of O := Z[α], is bounded by a constant J = J(d 1,..., d n 1, n) for every a from some subset Ω Z. Assume further that the Lang-Waldschmidt conjecture is true. Then for all but finitely many values of a Ω the Diophantine equation n (x p i y) dy n = ±1 i=1 has only solutions (x, y) Z 2 with y 1, except for the cases of n = 3 and d 2 = 1 or n = 4 and (d 2, d 3 ) {(1, 1), (±1, ±2)}, where it has exactly one more solution for every value of a. If Q(α) is primitive over Q especially if n is prime then there exists a bound J = J(d 1,..., d n 1, n) for the index I by lower bounds for the regulator of O (cf. Pohst and Zassenhaus [52], chapter 5.6, (6.22)). Applying the theory of Hilbertian fields and results on thin sets, primitivity is proved for almost all choices (in the sense of density) of the parameters, cf. [17]. The two exceptional families are those considered under 2 and 8 in the list in Section 4.1. A similar family has been considered by Heuberger in [19], however, in this case, the result is unconditionally true: Theorem 7. Let n 4 be an integer, d 2,..., d n 1 pairwise distinct integers and a an integral parameter. Furthermore we assume Let d 2 + + d n 1 0 or d 2 d n 1 0. F a (X, Y ) := (X + ay )(X d 2 Y )(X d 3 Y ) (X d n 1 Y )(X ay ) Y n. Then there exists a (computable) constant c 8 depending only on the degree n and d 2,..., d n 1, such that for all a c 8, the only solutions (x, y) Z 2 of the Diophantine equation F a (X, Y ) = ±1 are ±{(1, 0), ( a, 1), (d 2, 1), (d 3, 1),..., (d n 1, 1), (a, 1)}. 6

In [25], Heuberger and Tichy considered a multivariate version of (4): Theorem 8. Let n 4, r 1, p i Z[A 1,..., A r ] for 1 i n. We make the following assumptions on the polynomials p i : deg p 1 < < deg p n 2 < deg p n 1 = deg p n, LH(p n ) = LH(p n 1 ), but p n p n 1. Furthermore we suppose that for p {p 1,..., p n, p n p n 1 }, there exist positive constants t p, c p such that Let (LH(p))(a 1,..., a r ) c p (min a k ) deg p for a 1,..., a r t p. k F a1,...,a r (X, Y ) := n (X p i (a 1,..., a r )Y ) Y n. i=1 For every constant C > 1 there is a constant t 0 such that for all integers a 1,..., a r satisfying t 0 min k a k and max a k C min a k, k k the Diophantine equation F a1,...,a r (x, y) = ±1 considered for x, y Z only has the solutions {(±1, 0)} {±(p i (a 1,..., a r ), 1) : 1 i n}. In Heuberger [21] Thomas conjecture is proved under some technical hypothesis: Theorem 9. Let n N, n 3 and p i Z[a] be monic polynomials for i = 1,..., n. We write allow p 1 = 0 and assume Let If δ 4 = 1 or p i (a) = a di + k i a di 1 + terms of lower degree, i = 2,..., n, d 1 < d 2 < < d n 1 < d n and n + d 2 4. δ i := { 1 if d i d i 1 = 1, 0 otherwise and e := (e d 2 + 2d 3 )(k 2 δ 2 ) + ( e 2d 2 + d 3 )k 3 + (d 3 d 2 ) n d i. i=2 n k i / {2δ 3, (e + d 3 )δ 3 }, (5) then there is a (computable) constant c 9 = c 9 (p 1,..., p n ) depending on the coefficients of the polynomials p i such that for all integers a c 9 the Diophantine equation n F a (X, Y ) := (X p i (a)y ) Y n = ±1 only has the solutions i=1 i=4 (±1, 0) and ± (p i (a), 1), 1 i n. In [21], there is also a version with a stronger technical hypothesis than that in (5). For n = 3, that version improves Theorem 5. Especially there are only trivial solutions if max(deg p 1, 0) < deg p 2 < deg p 3 < < deg p n max(deg p 1, 0) + deg p 2 +... + deg p n < 15. In Heuberger [22], an explicit constant c 9 for Theorem 9 is given: ( c 9 = exp 1.01(n + 1)(n 1)!(n 1) n 2 exp ( 1.04(n 2)(nd n n + 3) )( ) nd n 1 )(2P + 1) ndn, n 3 where d j = deg p j and P is an upper bound for the absolute values of the coefficients of the p j, j = 1,..., n. 7

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